Random ruminations of an Evolutionary Technologist (a.k.a. Edublogger) who believes that "It's not what you take but what you leave behind..." Fun part of that could put him in good company with the likes of Benjamin Franklin, Eisenhower, JFK, John Lennon and Steven Spielberg. Longer list is here. Serious part is that he also focusses on Technology, Economics and Society.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

This would normally fall under microblogging as a matter of status updates. Anyway, we are currently working on the website of the Asian University Digital Resource Network (AUDRN). It's a network which aims to promote sharing of digital tools and practices around local knowledge among digital librarians and information scientists.

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

To all who heeded the call of innovation, passion and inspiration, thanks for making it a great experience. Our gratitude also go out to our sponsors especially to G2iX.com for their support and kind words for TEDxManila.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Missed the deadline but not the "aftermath" of the deadline. Still, I consider myself a part of this.

Here's an update from blogactionday.org's Robin Beck:

"Yesterday you and bloggers in 155 countries across six continents wrote about a single issue that impacts us all, and turned Blog Action Day 2009 into one of the largest social change events ever held on the web.

Your participation helped change the conversation and showed the power of the web to connect people across the world who despite their varied backgrounds have one shared desire: to make a difference. According to blogpulse, we increased the number of posts about climate change on a given day by 500%, and CNN wrote a great article covering the excitement and diversity of today's event across the web and around the world.

We hit 31,000 total trackable blog posts, and our current estimate is that together we reached at least 17.9 million people yesterday. We just exceeded 13,000 registered bloggers on the site and are working to get all of you who posted but haven't yet registered into the final count.

We had at least three major world governments as active participants in this year's event. United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon Brown posted the first Blog Action Day entry in Britain at the stroke of midnight on the 15th, which was followed by Foreign Minister David Milliband and many others from the UK stationed around the world. The PSOE governing party of Spain hosted a bloggers event focused on climate change and transformed their website for the day to promote Blog Action Day. And late in the day, President Barack Obama's White House blog joined in become part of the global movement of bloggers shaking the web.

Consequence wrote a whole series of posts on youth climate leadership.

You should all feel proud of this remarkable collective effort. And it doesn't have to end today. For many, we hope this serves as an entry point into the broader movement to address the issue of climate change. There are a number of ways and some amazing organizations through which you can continue to remain involved, and we encourage you to check out our Take Action section to learn more. "

I did a quick look at its main website and for Mathematics alone, it currently has 34 course offerings in Mathematics.

The Educator.com experience seems designed to recreate the live tutoring experience on to the internet. For example, a middle interface video lets the readers know exactly what's being explained while keeping an eye on the lecturer. If users need help in any of the scholastic subjects they offer, Educator.com sounds like a blessing to them. The site is currently still in expanding mode as the people behind it are getting more professors to fill in the subject such as physics, trigonometry, and more advanced topics like calculus.

Educator thus looks like it should be a must for those looking for the best scholastic content on the Web.

Here are a couple of samples:

First up, learn chemistry will take you to Advanced Placement Chemistry which is being run under Dr. Harold Goldwhite.

His background and the scope of the course follow:

"University of Cambridge educated (Ph.D and B.A.) Dr. Harold Goldwhite guides you through Educator's Chemistry course. Professor Goldwhite has taught all over the world, from 46 years in Los Angeles, to several years in England, and visiting professorships in France, Mexico, and Venezuela. His experience on the History Channel and vast knowledge of chemistry transform his lectures into an informative and fascinating journey with a comprehensive syllabus that covers standard and accelerated one year courses. Topics range from Atomic Theory, Chemical Reactions, Bonds, Kinetics, Acids and Bases, Thermodynamics, Electrochemistry, to Radioactivity. Each lecture is accompanied by multiple examples for each new idea and detailed notes of things to remember."

Next up, learn calculus leads you to the online class of Professor Murray. More below:

UC Berkeley (Ph.D) and Georgetown (B.S.) educated Dr. William Murray instructs Educator's Calculus II course covering from Advanced Integration Techniques and Applications of Integrals to Sequences/Series. Professor Murray demonstrates his extensive teaching experience by clarifying complicated topics with a wide array of examples, helpful tips, and time-saving tricks. Will's course is essential to those struggling with Calculus who would benefit from clear explanations and examples of common problems. Each video lecture is accompanied by several worked-out video examples and important notes to prepare for any examination.

There's a whole lot more but you may wish to quickly search the site for quality learning wherever, whenever.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Don't know about you but after I've joined tons of Social Network Sites in the last 6 years, I realize that I go through the cycle of technology adoption from trigger to peak of inflated expectations all the way to plateau of productivity. In between, I also tend to sink into some sort of SNS fatigue. So when a new site turns up -- usually every six months, I routinely create an account, based on each one's relative novelty.

Most usually come within my online attention radar. This time, I came across Sandbox via a huge billboard among a bunch of others along the stretch of Highway 54 in Makati, EDSA to the younger generation.

Ok so I ask myself what else is new? You've seen one with a lot of videos. And another with a lot of pictures, and yet another one with loads of music. What else could be different with Sandbox? Perhaps, the following?

Then again, probably the best thing that makes Sandbox different from other websites, is:

It's an online store that allows you to download music, games and movie-themed content to your mobile.

Hold on, give me time to create a new account and go through the cycle again. And good thing there are open APIs. You don't have to really abandon your other SNS so long as the accounts could cross-connect.

[Edit] - After creating an account and doing the usual validation steps, (Note: They are rather particularly stringent about the usrn@me + p@ssword specs.), I was taken to the site. One thing that caught my attention, the right-hand side application icons that move like those of the Mac during Mouse hover. Will give myself more time to explore its digisoria section. Looks interesting.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Or that's how the site AyosDito.ph would translate to English. Site's title tells us it has something to do with buying and selling in the Philippines. A comprehensive nationwide buy-and-sell website is something that I've actually been looking for in the last 4 weeks for posting an advertising for a school to no avail. So I had to go via the usual route of newspapers for national reach plus the plain old community approach of handing out flyers. Turns out I missed this vehicle by two weeks. Still it might be worth mentioning in this blog post.

You might be interested to find out that AyosDito covers the entire archipelago of 7,100 islands. And that means you can even browse regions from CAR to ARMM. Check out NCR to see some used items. Now if for some reason you'd want to buy or sell a bicycle, you may wish to click on bike.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Sometime in 2007, I discovered Yahoo Pipes. It's a service that allows one to "program" mash-ups using feeds and other inputs to generate custom feeds. True to form, I started toying with some sample Pipes, e.g. pulling word-of-the-day inputs from freedictionary.com and producing "interesting" photo-collections.

Sunday, April 05, 2009

David Needle reporting on the Web 2.0 Expo says that according to Will Wright, the gaming industry legend perhaps best known as the creator of SimCity and Spore: "The richness of Web-based environments is starting to blur the distinction between games and reality."

Among other things, Wright talks about the possibilities for the concept "immersive". Here's his take on Nintendo's Wii: "Most of the entertainment around the Wii is watching your friend act like a doofus, swinging the thing (Wiimote) around."

Monday, February 16, 2009

Now if someone were to promote say, kidsahoy.net, then perhaps this post could make a little difference. Will check back in about 2 days to see how things play out. Meanwhile, remind me not to duplicate this post. I am told that Google, "penalizes websites that have different URLs pointing to the same page."

Friday, January 30, 2009

Williams sets female athlete mark: $23 million, a record for career prize money by a female athlete. Not bad for someone who collected her first check of $240 from a tennis event in Canada in 1995. More here.

Just a side note: I'm tempted to think that $23 million pales in comparison with Manny Pacquiao's boxing prize money in his last bout. That said, I think it's unfair to call him ₱acquiao.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Kevin Merritt, the CEO and founder of blist, a Web-based list manager and spreadsheet that was used on Change.gov, the Obama Administration's transition Website writes about how Obama will be using Social Media to create an open and participatory channel to his constituents.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

The wiki-driven book, by Barry Libert (also co-author of Barack, Inc.) and John Spector, says:

"[It] is itself the product of an extraordinary collaboration of Wharton, MIT and thousands of business innovators, worldwide. Drawing on their collective "in the trenches" experience, the wearesmarter.org community reveals what works, and what doesn't, when you are building community into your decision making and business processes."

Indeed, the power of discovery, disclosure, connection and co-creation.

Friday, January 16, 2009

"Hello, How are you doing? i had sent you an email earlier today,please i need your urgent assistance, I had traveled to Nigeria for a conference , Unfortunately for me all my money and other items were stolen at the hotel where i lodged and i cannot call anyone because i lost my phone where phone numbers were kept also there is no money on me to make calls, nobody even know where i am now, I am so confused right now, I don't know what to do or where to go,I have access to only emails, No phone Please kindly loan me 1500 Dollars and also send it by western union to me with the below details NAME: address: 2 isiba street itire lagos Nigeria 23401 Write me immediately so i can have the western union details to use to collect the money sent , scan and send me the western union money transfer receipt or just write out the details on the receipt and send to me . Please keep this to your self only please Please come to my rescue Best regards,"

Friday, January 09, 2009

... or so it appeared on the link provided by Yahoo News. But wait there's less! Just follow the link to see what I mean. I hope they change the title to "Cheney says no one saw the CIA operatives get involved harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists."

I think the younger generation readers would call this Rick roll'd? Or is it bait and switch?